It's a common fantasy, and why shouldn't it be? It
sounds amazing: Instead of forcing your crafting time into nooks
here and there--after dinner, before the kids wake up, on the
weekends--you'll start a business so you eat, sleep, breathe
and, most important, live off your hobby.

But such is life that nothing is as easy as it seems. You may
have the skills to create wonderful handiwork, but starting a
successful crafts business calls for much more than that.
"[There's] a separation [between] those who are crafting
for fun and extra money and those who start out with the idea,
'I intend to make money from this, so I'm going to do it
right,'" says Barbara Brabec, a homebased business expert and
author of Make It Profitable! "And I've
always said in all my books that the people who succeed are those
who have a financial reason to do so."

So here's your first step: Decide why you're really
starting this business. "If you're doing it for love or
extra money, that's fine--you can have a lot of fun. You can
make enough to keep yourself in craft supplies for the rest of your
life, but you're never gonna bring home the groceries,"
says Brabec. "If you're in it because you actually need to
supplement your family income, then you need to get
serious."

And what does getting serious entail? Read on to find out how to
get started.

Start reading. You don't necessarily need an MBA to
succeed in a crafts business, but knowing how to wield a mean
needle isn't enough. "It's not necessary to have a
business background, but if you don't have one, [it is]
necessary to read up," says Susan Brandt of the Hobby Industry
Association, which counts crafts manufacturers, publishers,
distributors and retailers among its members.

Brandt suggests visiting your library to find business magazines
and texts as well as checking out community resources like adult
school classes. "If you can visit some large gift centers or
markets, try to find people who'd be willing to talk to you
from noncompetitive areas," adds Brandt. "There are a lot
of very generous people who remember that somebody helped them when
they started."

10 Steps to Startup

Find out about zoning regulations, licenses and permits.

Acquaint yourself with IRS regulations.

Register the name of your crafts business with local
officials.

Call your telephone company.

Open a checking account for your business.

Obtain a retailer's occupation tax registration
number.

Learn about federal regulations applicable to your crafts
business.

Set up a good record-keeping system.

Make sure you're properly insured.

Decide which printed materials you need in order to do an
effective promotional and selling job.

Researching Your Marketing, Prices and Sales Outlets

Research your market. Your friends and family may gush
over your work and even fork over $15 for an item, but will others?
This is where market research is imperative; don't assume
there's a market for your handcrafted wares until you find it.
Go to crafts fairs, scour the Internet, read trade publications,
and again, talk to other crafters to see what their experience has
been.

There are several reasons to thoroughly research your market: to
determine your competition, to find the best outlets for your
products and to see whether your products will sell. For example,
research your local craft malls, and you may find--as Brabec
has--that their popularity isn't what it once was because of
competition from imported and sometimes sub-par merchandise. And
this is exactly the type of thing you want to avoid. "The
reality is that in order to be successful, you need to have an
unusual product that isn't likely to have a competing product
made by a machine," says Brandt. "You need to have
something that you can make quickly but that isn't apparent or
easy for someone else to make or copy."

Jenny Hart has hit upon just such a product with her
hand-embroidered portraits that she sells via her website and Yard
Dog Gallery in Austin, Texas. An exhibited artist since age 17,
Hart originally got the idea to embroider images about seven years
ago after seeing embroidery work done by a psychiatric patient.
"My approach to [my business] has been a little different
since my product is currently available [only] by commission,"
says Hart, who began her "pretty barebones operation"
just five months ago by coding her own site at www.sublimestitching.com.

In her research, Hart didn't find anyone doing similar work
online. "My next step was to figure out who would be
interested in my work," says Hart. She then e-mailed hundreds
of webmasters with related sites (vintage fabric, retro-themed,
embroidery, etc.) to request link exchanges and spread the
word.

Fast Fact
Craftspeople who have employees generally have higher incomes than
those who don't, averaging $58,417 (vs. $32,624), according to
a May 2001 survey by The CraftsReport.

Determine where you'll sell your products. While
looking for online outlets for her unique products, Emilie Autumn
found that the Internet was a great source of information for her
business, Fancy Deluxe Co. "I spent long hours researching
art, marketing and auction sites as well as websites of successful
artists," says Autumn, who's been selling handcrafted
apparel, paintings, toys and furniture since 1991. She went online
in 2000 and currently runs the business from Grass Valley,
California, with the help of her husband, Ryan Cassano. "I
would write [the artists] and ask them a million questions!"
Autumn adds.

These web efforts paid off; link exchanges with like-minded
sites and participation in online auctions helped her site find
both traffic and media coverage. (We found her online, too.)

Other sales outlets for crafts include craft fairs, craft malls
and classified ads in crafts magazines. Entrepreneurs with really
unique products like Hart's and Autumn's might find
representation in galleries or retail outlets.

Price for profit. Again, research can help you solve one
of your most potentially sticky dilemmas: what to charge. "The
minute you start to do [your craft as a business], you discover you
don't love it as much when you're being paid 10 cents an
hour," says Brandt.

To avoid this monetary nightmare, do your homework before you
invest time and money. "The primary mistake [beginners] make
is to look at their product and say 'I wouldn't spend more
than $10 for this," says Brabec. "They price based on
their own pocketbook, which is a very big mistake because most
crafters aren't very rich. What they have to do is research the
marketplace and see what others who are making similar products are
charging for their wares."

When determining how much a product costs to make, you have to
count material costs as well as overhead like utilities, business
licenses, accountant fees and more. "If you find out you can
only make 10 products a day and it costs you $10 to buy the
materials, then that's $100. You can sell them for $15. Is your
day worth more than $50? And that's before you start deducting
[your overhead costs]," warns Brandt.

The Real Deal on a Crafts Business

Startup costs: as low as $50 (excluding the cost of a
computer and craft materials)

Equipment: craft supplies, marketing materials, a
computer, shipping and packaging supplies if you're selling
online or through mail order

Advice From the Pros

When we interviewed fresh-to-the-game stitching entrepreneur
Jenny Hart, we asked if she had any questions for the other
entrepreneurs and experts featured in this story. Here is their
advice:

Jenny Hart: How important is it to write a business plan?
Is it only necessary for a business that will be looking for a loan
or investors?Susan Brandt: In short, very. A business plan is what you
must start with--and then check your progress against at various
intervals. Keep in mind, though, a business plan is a living,
breathing document. You shouldn't change it gratuitously along
the way...but as you get into business and your vision becomes
clearer, there may be appropriate alterations to make along the
way.

Hart: I feel like it's easy to look for business
using the Internet. What are some of the most effective ways to
draw business out of cyberworld?Brandt: It's really not so easy. There's an awful
lot of competition just to get people to find you. Ironically, the
best ways to do that are by using the very media that is the
antithesis of the web: mailing and print advertising. TV, too, if
you can afford it. If you can get [your business] on local [cable]
TV or radio, you have the opportunity to promote your site. If you
can get a friend with an allied or noncompetitive traditional
business to distribute cards with your [URL], so much the
better.

Hart: How do I navigate the transition from working 9 to
5 while starting my homebased business and then doing that business
full time?Brabec: There's no easy way to do this. Most new home
business owners put in up to 80 hours a week, dividing their time
between their job and their business until something gives and they
have to make a decision about giving one or the other up. If your
job income is essential to your personal lifestyle, do not, under
any circumstances, quit your job until you are sure you can bring
in enough money (profit) from your homebased business to meet your
needs, because you cannot assume that more time will translate into
more income.

First, you must have a solid plan for how you're going to
spend your extra time to make and sell more products or start
sideline activities to add to your income, such as teaching or
writing. When you can prove to yourself on paper that you could
double or triple your current income if you only had more time,
quitting your job then becomes truly a matter of faith in yourself
and your abilities.

Tip: Include in your plan the "worst-case
scenario" if you should fail. If you can live with that
possibility, you don't have much to lose. Above all, do not
rely on anyone else to tell you what to do--particularly family and
friends. In the end, I believe we must all trust our "gut
reactions" since they rarely fail to be right.

Everything Else

It's impossible to state here every single thing you'll
need to do to get your new business off the ground; books have been
written on the subject (Brabec's, for instance). To get her
Ardenvoir, Washington, handmade soap business started, Cheri Marsh
created a name and logo, designed an e-commerce site, and created a
line of products. And though she's been in business for more
than four years, her challenges haven't ceased.

"I live about 80 miles roundtrip from the nearest
town," says Marsh, who started The SoapMeister
LLC in 1997 after friends and family expressed interest in the
soaps she created for her sensitive skin. "It's very
difficult to find raw materials and near impossible to have them
delivered. Juggling manufacturing in with everything is a
challenge, as the soap must cure for four to six weeks prior to
sale; that entails estimating needs two months in advance." To
combat these challenges, Marsh plans to relocate and expand her
business so she can have easier access to potential employees,
manufacturing materials and offline customers.

So take a long, hard look at your favorite hobby before you
decide to turn it into a business. Do you want to associate
accounting, fulfillment, licensing, marketing and all the other
components of a successful business with what you do for fun? If
the idea of the public enjoying your handiwork and you taking
charge of your own life via your craft makes all the hours of
research and hard work worth it, then get going. The world is
waiting for your artistic touch.